Simon Papp

* Kapnikbánya, February 14, 1886 – † Budapest, July 27, 1970 / geologist, university professor, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1946), founder of Hungarian petroleum mining ; ; He graduated from university in Cluj-Napoca. In 1909, he received his doctorate in mineralogy, geology and physical geography, and later became the first assistant professor at the Department of Mineralogy and Geology of the University of Cluj-Napoca, under Professor Gyula Szádeczky-Kardoss. In 1911, Hugó Böckh invited him to become an assistant professor at the Department of Geology and Siteology of the Mining and Forestry College in Selmecbánya, where he taught until 1915. He was an active participant in the highly successful natural gas exploration in Transylvania. He played a significant role in the discovery of the oil and gas deposits of Egbell in Nitra County (1914) and Bujavica in Croatia (1918). In 1916, he was appointed chief mining geologist in the mining department of the Ministry of Finance. In this position, he participated in almost all geological research in Hungary at that time: he researched ores, minerals, coal, salt, oil and natural gas. He left the state service after World War I. After working as a petrologist and then as a mapping geologist, he worked on mining and then primarily on hydrocarbon research. His reports on his oil explorations tell of his work on four continents. Between 1920 and 1932, he conducted research on behalf of English companies in five European countries from England to Albania, as well as in Asia Minor; in Australia, New Guinea, the USA and Canada on behalf of other oil companies. In 1933 he returned home for good and launched an action to explore hydrocarbon deposits in the young Tertiary strata of Transdanubia, which he believed could be found. On February 9, 1937, the country's first industrially significant oil field was discovered. After the success, he became the chief geologist of the Hungarian–American Oil Industry Co. (MAORT) founded (1938) and then its CEO until 1947. Between 1941 and 1944, he also directed natural gas exploration in Northern Transylvania. In March 1944, through his personal connections, he prevented the occupying Germans from taking possession of the MAORT plants. In 1944, he was appointed professor of the Department of Oil Exploration and Production at the Faculty of Technology in Sopron. He was a professor of the department he founded until 1948. When the oil industry was nationalized, he was sentenced to death and then to life imprisonment on false charges and stripped of his academic membership168. He was released and rehabilitated in 1955. He worked in the oil industry again until 1962, when he retired. ; ; His main works: ; Transdanubian Petroleum and Natural Gas Exploration (Oil), 1938, ; Hungarian Petroleum and Natural Gas Exploration in the Period from 1780 to 1945, I–II, 1963–1964.